Note 51 — Chapter Thirty
Reading edition
My brother and Dora have often accused me of conspiring to bring about a certain encounter which took place between them at the farm one blustery November afternoon, and out of which meeting one of the first really formative events of my brother’s life was to take shape.
Be that as it may, the simple facts stand duly authentic. Paula, home for her father’s birthday, happened to remark upon Dora’s reputation at Tallahassee High for taste and skill at decoration. Winslow jumped at my suggestion that we ask her over to spend a day and help us stencil the grass-cloth panels for the dining-room. Certainly anyone with a pair of eyes in his head could judge for himself that David was looking peaked, of a complaint easily diagnosed. That same day, calling over at Mother’s, I did, it is true, ask him to walk back home with me to tend some ailing stock. Also, the evidence is that there were two sick ewes and a ram at the farm that day, and Dave’s skill with them was common knowledge. Further than that, as they say in legal phraseology, I do not feel called upon to elucidate.